Thirteen (3 page)

I could do that. I could do anything.

I was thirteen.

I
WANTED LARS.
I did. I
wanted
him. Not in a hot-and-heavy “let's make out” sort of way, because that was not within the realm of possibility at this juncture of my life. (“Juncture.” I loved it. I loved finding words like that and tossing them about, even if just in my own mind. “Flotsam and jetsam.” “Indubitably.” “Segue,” with that lovely “
way
” sound at the end, despite the deceptive spelling.)

No, I didn't want to make out with Lars—yet. I just wanted to own him, to have him be mine. I wanted him the way I wanted a new bike when I was younger, or the Easy-Bake Oven.

I kept waiting for something to happen between us, for us to at least hold hands again, but somehow the world had yet to throw us into that perfect situation where hand-holding would be the only possible response.

It made me feel desperate, how much I ached for him. I'd have daydreams about him, stupid stuff like him finding me at my locker and putting his hands over my eyes, then leaning close and murmuring “Hey there” into my ear. Or—and this one was kind of embarrassing—I had this one fantasy that I'd fall asleep on one of the benches out on the quad (because I did sometimes curl up on them for a quickie little snooze), and he'd find me and think how cute I looked. Or not
cute
, but pretty. And maybe I'd be wearing a miniskirt, and I wouldn't be indecent or anything, but he'd notice that I had nice legs. He'd say, “Wake up, sleepyhead,” and I would. I'd be all flustered and drowsy-eyed, and he'd grin like he found me so incredibly charming.

My daydreams made me feel lame, though, because I was sure he didn't think about me as much as I thought about him. Well, fairly sure. I hoped he did, but I also knew that boys were different creatures than girls, as evidenced by my dear, sweet, nutty brother, Ty. I loved him with all my heart, but I worried about him sometimes.

Like now, for instance. The sound of duct tape being ripped from the roll jerked me out of my Lars fantasies and dropped me back into cold, hard reality.

“Ty, what are you doing?” I asked. It was Monday morning. We'd leave for school in five minutes. Mom would drop Ty off at Trinity, while I'd ride with Sandra to Westminster.

“Taping up my pants,” Ty said. He ripped a foot-long strip of Day-Glo orange from the roll. He wrapped it around the leg of his gray sweats, affixing it to his ankle.

“Okay, yeah. Got that,” I said. “
Why
?”

“So snakes can't crawl in,” he said. He frowned. The tape was misbehaving and getting all twisty at the end.

“Ty,” I said, “there are no snakes at Trinity.”

“How do you know? How do you know
for sure
?” he asked. “You never know. That's what you told me last night.”

Well, true. But that was because I was in charge of making him take his bath, and he had refused to wash his hair. Should a six-year-old refuse to wash his hair? No. Should a six-year-old need bath-time supervision at all? No again. Ty was such the baby of the family. One of these days he was going to have to grow up, and then what was he going to do?

But yes. I'd played the lice card, telling him that lice loved dirty scalps and you never knew when a louse was on the prowl.

It worked, and now I was paying the price.

“I wasn't talking about snakes,” I said.

“If a rattlesnake crawls in my pants, it will bite me,” Ty said. He ripped and pasted one last strip. “Now it can't, because I have foiled it. Ha ha!”

He straightened up. His sweats bagged around his skinny legs, then tapered at his shins, bound messily with orange tape. He was Duct-Tape-Boy, with his hair all stick-y-up-y from falling asleep with it wet.

“Don't you think people will…”

“What?”

Laugh at you
, I'd been about to say. But it seemed cruel. Ty was six. He shouldn't have to deal with the harshness of fashion.

Then again, maybe it would be crueler to let him march off like that?

I came at it more gently. “Do other kids tape their pants up?”

“No,” he said. He thought for a moment. “But Lexie has sparkly pants.”

“She does?”

His lips twitched in a way that was new for him this year—which I guess showed that he was growing up more than I gave him credit for. It was a twitch that meant
I want to tell you this, but I'm also self-conscious. A little. But not so much that I'm not going to tell you anyway.
“I like her in her sparkly pants.”

“Uh-
huh
.”

“That's why I'm taping my pants. That
and
the snakes.” Again the mouth-twitch, along with a glance to make sure I wouldn't make fun of him. “I want to be brave for Lexie.”

“And taping up your pants makes you brave?”

“Yes,” he said, “because if I am brave in my heart, knowing that snakes can't get in, then I will be brave on the outside, too.”

“Ahhh,” I said. Well, it made a goofy sort of sense, I guess. I just hoped Lexie went for boys with duct-taped sweats.

Mom hurried in. She was running late, as usual. “Come on, Ty, let's go,” she said. She took in Ty's pants. A pained look crossed her face, which then de-wrinkled into a resigned
oh well
expression.

“Last week a little boy named Daniel wore a pirate costume,” she told me.

“And he peed on the playground,” Ty added. “He did a tree-pee, which is not allowed.”

“A first-grader peed on the playground?” I said.

“He did it so the teachers couldn't see,” Ty said.

Mom narrowed her eyes. “Ty, you are
not
to pee on the playground.”

“Mom!” he protested. “I would never!”

“Just like you would never pick your nose?”

“I don't! I quit!”

“I certainly hope so.” She swooped up her purse from the granite counter. “Okay, we're off. Winnie, tell Sandra she better get a move on.”

“Sandra!” I bellowed, arching my head toward the living room, which led by way of traveling air molecules to Sandra's upstairs bedroom. “Get a move on!”

Mom's look said,
Gee, Winnie, thanks
, but she didn't bother to scold me. She strode out the back door, and Ty scurried after her.

Several minutes later, Sandra thundered downstairs, her hair flying and her Chuck Taylors unlaced. She didn't take the time to grab a package of Pop-Tarts. She didn't even glance at me. “Let's go,” is all she said.

Uh-oh
, I thought.
Bad mood
.

In the front seat of her rattly old BMW, which she'd saved up for herself last year, I waited for her to spill. She didn't.

“What's wrong?” I finally asked.

“Nothing,” she said.

I gazed out the window. Sandra's cell phone, visible in the pouch of her messenger bag, played a snippet of an old Doors song: “Hello, I love you. Won't you tell me your name?”

“Want me to answer it?” I asked.

“No, I do not.”

I fished it out and checked the name. “It's Bo.”

She snatched it before I could press the green “talk” button.

“I said
no
,” she snapped. “What do you not understand about that?”

I shrank. Sandra was often a grump, but not usually a mean grump. And why wouldn't she want to talk to Bo, whom she'd been going out with for two years? Bo was the most perfect guy in the world. He was captain of the high school baseball team. He was funny and sweet and had muscles, but not in a cheesy way. He loved doughnuts.

Plus he was nice to Ty and me, and not to impress Sandra. Sometimes he'd show up at our house before Sandra got home, and he'd hang out and watch
Oprah
with us. Or
Ellen
, which was becoming my new favorite.
Not
Dr. Phil. Ty would force Bo to admire the spear he'd made or whatever, and Bo would give him ideas about how to make it better, like soaking a leather shoelace in water and wrapping it around the part where the arrowhead was attached, so that when it dried, it was super tight and looked all authentic.

I loved Bo. I was probably a little
in
love with Bo, even though I was also intensely in like with Lars.

“Are you guys having a fight?” I asked Sandra.

“No,” she said.

Then why don't you want to talk to him?
I wanted to say. But I didn't, because the energy she was radiating told me I'd only get barked at. I was very much a wimp when it came to conflict. Anyone's conflict. Cinnamon would tell me about these knockdown, drag-out screaming matches she had with her dad, over stupid stuff like her cell minutes or how much time she spent on the Internet, and part of me would be in awe. At the same time, just hearing her stories made my stomach get tight.

Sandra's phone stopped ringing. A few seconds later, it did its voice mail bleep.

“Do you want me to check it for you?” I asked timidly.

“No. And I don't want you asking about it. I don't want you talking at all.” She glared at me. “Do you think you can do that?”

She said it like I was a baby, like,
Do you think that's remotely possible? Do you think, maybe, you can get that through your head?

It stung. I had my own boy problems, not that she'd ever asked. And Ty was the baby, not me. Although even Ty had girl problems, apparently.

We rode the rest of the way in silence. She dropped me off at the junior high building, and I got out without looking at her.

“Bye,” she said grudgingly. There might have been a smidgen of apology in it.

Whatever
, I thought. But because I was me, I muttered “bye” back. I didn't even slam the door.

 

Over lunch, I vented to Dinah and Cinnamon. Dinah slurped her chocolate milk, nodding with wide eyes, while Cinnamon scowled on my behalf. She shoved around her carrot sticks, which she was eating to try and lose weight. That made her scowly, too.

“She turned the whole day bad,” I complained. “She took her own stupid mood and forced it on me.”

“Do you think she and Bo are going to break up?” Dinah asked.

“They better not,” Cinnamon said. She and Dinah were Bo fans, too. “She'd be throwing away the best thing that ever happened to her.”

“I know,” I said.

“She doesn't deserve him,” Cinnamon went on. “He's, like, a golden boy. She's a pile of poop.”

“Well…not a pile of
poop
,” I said.

“Sandra's really nice when she's not being a jerk,” Dinah said loyally. “She could be a golden girl if she wanted. If she were a cheerleader.”

“Sandra would never be a cheerleader,” I said. “She's more like the anti-cheerleader.”

“Except she's still really beautiful,” Dinah said.

Cinnamon admitted it with a nod. I felt a familiar pang, because I knew I wasn't.

I changed the subject. Kind of. “It's like, everything comes back to boy-girl stuff. Sandra's fighting with Bo. Ty's in a tizzy over this girl, Lexie, and you want to know why? Because her pants are sparkly.”

Cinnamon snorted.

“And Lars hardly ever talks to me except in class, and then it's just to say
comment ça va
and
où se trouve la biblio-theque
!” Even though Lars was in eighth grade and I was in seventh, we had French together.

“At least he doesn't take Spanish,” Cinnamon said. Cinnamon took Spanish. Señor Torres made the girls partner up with girls and the boys partner up with boys, because of hormones.

“It's so annoying, though!” I said. “He did hold my hand, right? I didn't make that up, did I?”

“He did,” Dinah said. “I saw.”

“There was definite hand-to-hand contact,” Cinnamon agreed.

It had happened publicly, the hand-holding, which at the time made it all the more miraculous. Lars and I were outside the junior high building waiting to be picked up, and his hand reached over and grabbed mine.
His
grabbed
mine
.
He
initiated.

Should a guy hold a girl's hand if he's never going to do it again?

No, he should not.

“Listen, Win,” Cinnamon said.

I looked at her, wishing she wouldn't call me “Win.” “Win” was Lars's name for me, just as “Lars” was my name for him. His real name was “Larson,” which was nice, but “Lars” was better.